Cacophony
by Sheblet
Summary: 3.7 Tag. Assuming Dominic had gotten a little farther than role playing and threats. Maura is there for Jane.


**Cacophony**

Maura Isles and emotions are like oil and water.

Maura grew up in a cool, passive environment. Sometimes she wonders if she's even capable of strong emotion because she has become so good at numbing it. But when she sees Jane's distraught, tear-streaked face, she knows she must be (capable of emotion) because she feels a sudden, overwhelming dread and she has half a mind to run because she is Maura Isles and Jane Rizzoli is like an emotional receptacle-

Oil and water. Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles are like oil and water.

And that is exactly why Maura must stay.

So she lets go, lets herself feel everything she's been hiding since they first tapped into Dominic's webcam. The fear, the stomach-broiling horror, the sadness…. She is overflowing with it all, and tears stream down her face as she and Jane come together. Maura wraps her arms tightly around the other woman, so very tight, hoping to squeeze every horrible emotion from Jane's body until there is none left.

And that is how it appears when they separate. Jane looks as if she has nothing left, nothing inside her, nothing to give. Her eyes are empty, and Maura knows she must feel empty as well. But Maura knows that Jane is _not _empty, not even a little, and the detective will have to deal with her trauma at some point soon.

"Can I come home with you?" The voice is strange, small, distorted; and it takes Maura a moment to realize the voice belongs to Jane. She sounds so wrong. So dead.

Maura shakes her head, as if to rid the very word from her thoughts. Jane is not dead, she is alive, and maybe she's not okay but she will be, she will be okay-

Meanwhile, at Maura's head shake, Jane's face has fallen, and she nods. "I understand. I'll see if Frankie-" and with a horrified jolt Maura realizes that Jane thinks she has said no, has chosen to abandon her, oh God-

"No! God, Jane, no, I- _of course _you may stay with me. Must you even ask?"

The darkest corners of Jane's lips turn up very slightly, but Maura knows that Jane is only doing this because it's what's expected, it's what a normal reaction would be. Maura realizes that Jane has spent too much time pretending, too much time knowing what it takes to pass as "okay" and then pretending to feel it.

Maura finds this unacceptable.

The car ride home is dead silent.

No, not dead.

Just silent.

Jane has her head turned away from Maura, and the reflection in the window from the streetlights outside shows that she has drifted off into another world – and, knowing Jane, it isn't a pleasant one.

The moment they get home, Jane mumbles something about needing a shower and slinks off towards the guest bathroom. Maura lets out a heavy, world-bearing sigh and sinks onto her sofa; for once in her life content to just sit and stare mindlessly at the television. She has used all of her emotional reserves, she thinks – she was not prepared for this. But then, of course, she knows no one is ever really _prepared _to see a loved one in such a state.

And Maura does love Jane.

She loves Jane a great deal, indeed.

She's halfway through not understanding the pop culture references in some horribly boring sitcom before it suddenly hits her that Jane never took a towel into the bathroom with her. Maura likes to keep her towels in the hall closet for organizational purposes, something Jane never ceases to be personally affronted by.

"_You should just keep them _in _the bathroom,_" the detective had advised, "_it's waaay less trouble. This is just annoying."_

As she grabs a fluffy white towel from the closet, she realizes that she wants more than anything for Jane to harass her about the way she organizes her home.

She is just about to knock on the bathroom door when she hears some unidentifiable sound hidden just beneath the running water. She pauses, listening, and when she still can't place the sound, she knocks.

"Jane?"

She does not receive an answer. She tries again, and still. Dead silence.

No. Not dead.

That word itself is enough to make her open the door without heed for what is happening beyond it. What she finds breaks her heart in so, so many ways.

There is Jane, on the floor of the shower, still in her boy shorts and bra. It is as if she was in such a hurry to get in the shower, she hadn't even bothered to undress completely. She is scrubbing at her arm with a sudsy washcloth, and sobs wrack her thin frame. Her chest heaves and her body rocks, so hard that Maura fears her scant ribs won't hold her. Suddenly, Maura realizes that mixed in with the sobs are words, at first jumbled and then painstakingly clear.

"Ian'tetim_off," _her voice at once quivers and raises in panic, creating a sound so terrifying Maura's whole chest clenches._ "I can't get him off," _Jane wails again, with such woe and suffering and disgust and loathing that Maura feels it all too, and it is more emotion than she could have ever dreamed of holding.

"It's all right," Maura coos, comforting, her sudden understanding of Jane's pain making her incapable of anything but. Jane wails again, and Maura closes the distance, in one fluid motion turning off the shower and pressing the clean white towel to Jane's back. She sinks down next to the detective, now wrapping Jane in the towel and her own arms and squeezing like she had earlier that evening. Only this time…. This time she knows she is helping squeeze the bad feelings out.

"It's okay. You are alive. You are alive, and you will be okay."

And she is.

And she will be.


End file.
